Open Technology - Training and Explorations
Supervised by Jayne Wallace (University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne), Mel Woods (University of Dundee), Mehan Jayasuriya (Mozilla Foundation), Max von Grafenstein (UdK Berlin), Davide Gomba (Officine Innesto).
This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 813508. For more details, see Acknowledgements section.
This repository documents research through design activities using creative/craft technologist practice as a thinking through making approach to explore open technologies in relation to wearable IoT as part of the Open Design of trusted Things - OpenDoTT project. The code and documentation of activities investigates potentials and possibilities of open technology for sketching and prototyping for wearable IoT, including material from an accompanying Open Technology Training.
The aim of the training and explorations is to gain experience with open technology in the scope of wearables in order to develop capacity to shape emerging best practices in relation to internet connected technology when it intersects with our bodies and sense of self. The insights will inform further prototype development and the role of open technology with the wider research project on the relationship of wearables and the self. Through a series of code sketches and partial prototypes the addresses research questions such as:
The /training directory contains sketches as well as
external examples used in and/or written during the Open Technology
Training. The training aimed to provide a foundation for further
explorations particular to each OpenDoTT area (body/self, home,
communities and neighborhoods, smart city, and a trust mark for IoT).
Additionally, through individual training sessions I was able to explore
LoRaWAN technology (low range wide area network). Details can be found
in the relevant project directories’ README files.
The /explorations directory contains code sketches
documenting my thinking through making approach. In this practice, for
example, writing code is carried out as an investigative and reflective
practice where the aim is an in-depth understanding of a wide spectrum
of technology as a material matter and the making of prototypes gain
further meaning than proofs or solutions.
The different projects/sketches build in part on the training insights building a working piece of wearable IoT.
/explorations/LoRa/ contain a simple LoRaWAN test sketch
which enabled me to experience and explore the viability of this firstly
intriguing connectivity topology. The place where I have resided during
this time had LoRaWAN coverage through The Things Network. This
was particularly insightful as it showed that real world sizes of
payloads are indeed minimal and low in spectrum sharing capacity, which
makes it nearly unsuitable for sketching in research through design and
thinking through making scenarios.
/explorations/the-drawing-things contains code sketches
which use statically exported step count data (from the researcher’s
phone) to explore different modes of making this data available in an
interactive drawing process (generating “ink” from body related data).
This approach of “drawing with data” as a semi-automatic tangible
reflective non-verbal conversation with data of our bodies is
preliminary work to the prototype “The Drawing Thing” which is also
deployed with participant as part of WP2. For easy sharing of iterations
sketches use web based technology and for code accessibility they build
on the popular and openly available p5js
platform.
/explorations/the-other-things contains firmware studies
in building a step count tracker myself using open(-ly available)
technologies. The sketches use the well known open platform Arduino as
well as explore the Circuit Python platform with the benefit of
distributing firmware updates as simple files which participants can
drag and drop on the devices connected through USB on their own
machines. This option was considered to enable remote studies, which are
common during the Covid-19 pandemic. The main insight from these
explorations is that making a device which is accurate enough as well as
sufficiently compact and concise in footprint is a challenge which is
time-consuming, less design related, and already solved by industry
products. The latter have the disadvantage of not being open (in the
sense of open technology), for which we suggest approaching them through
“uncrafting” (Murer et al.), shifting “open” technology to “opening
technology”. Alternatively, ready-made products have the advantage to be
familiar to participants which could potentially benefit primary focus
on relationships to data.
Source code newly written by the researcher in this repository is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL).
Any other original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Doctoral Researcher: Jens Alexander Ewald
Supervisors: Jayne Wallace (University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne), Mel Woods (University of Dundee), Mehan Jayasuriya (Mozilla Foundation), Max von Grafenstein (UdK Berlin), Davide Gomba (Officine Innesto)
This project is part of Open Design of Trusted Things (OpenDoTT) doctoral training network and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 813508.